Future posts by Chris Feyrer can be found at:
Thank you.
Christopher Feyrer -- Engineer and Web Series composer -- Official Blog
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Thursday, June 17, 2010
How the heck do you pronounce Feyrer?
After poor World of Higlet struggled to pronounce my obscure German-Austrian last name in this great interview with Mediocre Films' Greg Benson at approximately 4:10 ---
I decided it was time to go ahead and make a video explaining exactly just how to pronounce Feyrer! Enjoy.
If you still can't say the name after viewing the video, feel free to call me Chris....Jackson. :)
I decided it was time to go ahead and make a video explaining exactly just how to pronounce Feyrer! Enjoy.
If you still can't say the name after viewing the video, feel free to call me Chris....Jackson. :)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Empty Throne: Apotheosis Episode 2: "The Witness" published.
Parts 1 and 2 of Empty Throne: Apotheosis, the medieval murder mystery web series I am composing music for, are online at http://www.emptythroneworld.com/. It's been great fun to be a part of Jason Bigart and Jay Erickson's medieval fantasy.
On Part 2: The Witness
My favorite piece I've written so far comes near the beginning of part 2. In that scene, the two Inquisitors go through a magical montage where they review all the clues they've accumulated so far. Jason asked for music similar to that you'd find in those type of montages on CSI. However, I had already created a medieval sound pallate..so what to do? Well, I took a few hours to soak up CSI music on You Tube and similar artists on Pandora, and then came up with my own melody and background drums with harpsichord and medieval percussion. I think it ends up working really well.
It was also challenging to write music for the fight scene at the end where the killer confronts the male Inquisitor, portrayed by Travis Hanson, and also tries to kill a child, Nara, portrayed by Jason's daughter, Miranda! After realizing the scene would be very effects-laden, I kept the instrumentation simple, fast paced, and worked to match the freakishness on screen.
Finally, knowing that Nara is going to become a key part of Apotheosis's storyline, I wrote her her own theme, which debuts at the end of episode 2 as a solo viola. It will be orchestrated more fully in episode two, which features a lot more of Nara.
It's really exciting to finally be writing music for a web series! Jason has submitted the two published episodes of Apotheosis to Indianapolis GenCon, where they will have their first live audience. I hope they have a nice speaker system.
On Part 2: The Witness
My favorite piece I've written so far comes near the beginning of part 2. In that scene, the two Inquisitors go through a magical montage where they review all the clues they've accumulated so far. Jason asked for music similar to that you'd find in those type of montages on CSI. However, I had already created a medieval sound pallate..so what to do? Well, I took a few hours to soak up CSI music on You Tube and similar artists on Pandora, and then came up with my own melody and background drums with harpsichord and medieval percussion. I think it ends up working really well.
It was also challenging to write music for the fight scene at the end where the killer confronts the male Inquisitor, portrayed by Travis Hanson, and also tries to kill a child, Nara, portrayed by Jason's daughter, Miranda! After realizing the scene would be very effects-laden, I kept the instrumentation simple, fast paced, and worked to match the freakishness on screen.
Finally, knowing that Nara is going to become a key part of Apotheosis's storyline, I wrote her her own theme, which debuts at the end of episode 2 as a solo viola. It will be orchestrated more fully in episode two, which features a lot more of Nara.
It's really exciting to finally be writing music for a web series! Jason has submitted the two published episodes of Apotheosis to Indianapolis GenCon, where they will have their first live audience. I hope they have a nice speaker system.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
What does Felicia Day have in common with Level 3 Unix Engineers? Besides the geekiness. A blog on leadership.
This is the first of a 3-part series on Leadership.
I work at a medium sized datacenter in Madison, WI. My job as a Unix engineer is to act as queue lead for iSeries (AS/400) based systems and babysit Unix-based servers. As I've worked my way up at CDW I have noticed one thing that is very clear; with great power comes great responsibility. The higher you go, the more is expected of you as far as time and concentration on work. Overall, I believe this is healthy because it is like sharpening a pencil; the sharper it is, the cleaner and more effective the work is. It's also given me an interesting perspective on leadership.
Leadership is 24/7. There is no time when you are not a leader, because even when you are enjoying yourself it is time that will affect your ability to lead in the future. For example, indulge too much in recreational activities and you will suffer the consequences the next day. Engage in reckless behavior in your free time and it will haunt you in your professional time. Conversely, behave appropriately in your free time -- remaining fun of course -- and it can enhance your work time.
What does Felicia Day have in common with Level 3 Unix engineers? Both of them are "on call'. Felicia is "on call" to the needs of her web series, The Guild; and lives her brand whether living recreationally, in private, or in public. She also has become a figurehead to the entire web series industry. Felicia always has to keep in mind that she is representing her creations -- and those of others to a certain extent -- wherever and whatever she is doing which demands a high level of behavior because of a high level of scrutiny. Unix engineers on call are expected to be available to solve issues at the drop of a hat, even in the middle of the night, 24/7. Their properties they are managing are the servers of their clients who expect their servers to be up and available, you guessed it, 24/7. Not only that, they represent their company and their behavior represents the whole company.
Directly attached to this responsibility is an ability to relax, have fun, and remain calm. All the L3 engineers at CDW -- and the cast and the crew of the Guild, also have this in common. Jokes fly around the office space -- of varying quality, among the Unix team. Similarly, jokes fly around the Guild cast and crew -- of varying quality (heehee) -- and spirits are kept high.
What does all this say? Leadership has some universal traits. One of them, is remembering wherever you are, whatever you are doing, once you have decided to be a leader, you are always treated as one and always held accountable. And should you fail that mantle, in the public eye, it can always be difficult to regain it. But don't sweat it too much. If life is a game, you might as well have fun with it!
I work at a medium sized datacenter in Madison, WI. My job as a Unix engineer is to act as queue lead for iSeries (AS/400) based systems and babysit Unix-based servers. As I've worked my way up at CDW I have noticed one thing that is very clear; with great power comes great responsibility. The higher you go, the more is expected of you as far as time and concentration on work. Overall, I believe this is healthy because it is like sharpening a pencil; the sharper it is, the cleaner and more effective the work is. It's also given me an interesting perspective on leadership.
Leadership is 24/7. There is no time when you are not a leader, because even when you are enjoying yourself it is time that will affect your ability to lead in the future. For example, indulge too much in recreational activities and you will suffer the consequences the next day. Engage in reckless behavior in your free time and it will haunt you in your professional time. Conversely, behave appropriately in your free time -- remaining fun of course -- and it can enhance your work time.
What does Felicia Day have in common with Level 3 Unix engineers? Both of them are "on call'. Felicia is "on call" to the needs of her web series, The Guild; and lives her brand whether living recreationally, in private, or in public. She also has become a figurehead to the entire web series industry. Felicia always has to keep in mind that she is representing her creations -- and those of others to a certain extent -- wherever and whatever she is doing which demands a high level of behavior because of a high level of scrutiny. Unix engineers on call are expected to be available to solve issues at the drop of a hat, even in the middle of the night, 24/7. Their properties they are managing are the servers of their clients who expect their servers to be up and available, you guessed it, 24/7. Not only that, they represent their company and their behavior represents the whole company.
Directly attached to this responsibility is an ability to relax, have fun, and remain calm. All the L3 engineers at CDW -- and the cast and the crew of the Guild, also have this in common. Jokes fly around the office space -- of varying quality, among the Unix team. Similarly, jokes fly around the Guild cast and crew -- of varying quality (heehee) -- and spirits are kept high.
What does all this say? Leadership has some universal traits. One of them, is remembering wherever you are, whatever you are doing, once you have decided to be a leader, you are always treated as one and always held accountable. And should you fail that mantle, in the public eye, it can always be difficult to regain it. But don't sweat it too much. If life is a game, you might as well have fun with it!
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Feyrer Studios
7 years in the making, my recording studio is now complete. This means I will finally be able to make music for personal and professional use the way I've wanted to for the past decade. People are saying it's like being around a com- pletely different person. Not only that, thanks to Jason Bigart and Jay Erikson, I'm scoring the web series The Apotheosis of Life a chapter in The Empty Throne series.
Too busy to blog the details, but stay tuned and please check in for the Apotheosis 's premiere on March 26th!
Thanks to all who have supported me to get back on my artistic feet either by direct interaction or simply by example. specifically Eanan Patterson for helping me flesh out my music production work flow, Anne Richmond for idea-bouncing, and Rick Moyer for his prayers.
Chris
Too busy to blog the details, but stay tuned and please check in for the Apotheosis 's premiere on March 26th!
Thanks to all who have supported me to get back on my artistic feet either by direct interaction or simply by example. specifically Eanan Patterson for helping me flesh out my music production work flow, Anne Richmond for idea-bouncing, and Rick Moyer for his prayers.
Chris
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Knights of the Guild : The story of Kenny and Jenni
Kenny Mittleider always wanted to be popular. What he didn't know was that he would be some day, hosting the Internet podcast Knights of the Guild, the official podcast of the web series The Guild.
Mittleider, in his late thirties, is a post production supervisor in southern California and a huge self-proclaimed geek, with a major Star Wars collection and a sweet, huggable teddy-bear personality.
Enter Jenni Powell, former Lonelygirl15 crew member and transplant to the crazy world that is Los Angeles, funny, quirky, irreverent, and chasing the dream of web series industry success.
Both offered their talents to Felicia Day's web series The Guild crew back in the first run of the off-the-wall comedy about a group of addicted gamers forced to interact offline. Back then, all was funded by PayPal and run by volunteers, with Jenni as Production assistant and Kenny working behind the scenes on featurettes and in post production. Already fans, they became even more hooked while working on the show, with the access to the awesome cast, crew, and fan base that makes up the Guild community.
Thusly, a fan podcast was born.
Powell found herself Mittleider's partner in crime, and together "Kenny and Jenni" have built quite a name for themselves not only for their excellent coverage of The Guild but for their great repoire and hilarious online personas.
From the first edition, it was clear that this was not your every day fan podcast. With professional quality audio production, show-to-show continuity, and clever lead-ins to each section of their show, Knights of the Guild launched a year ago and became a staple for fans looking for the latest and greatest in goings-on with the Los Angeles-based web series.
Kenny and Jenni make it look easy. What fans don't see are the hours and hours of preproduction, organizing schedules with cast members for interviews, soliciting and handling fan feedback, dealing with crazy technical difficulties, and spreading the word near and far that goes on behind the scenes.
To both of them I wanted to say bravo and congrats for a year of hilarity, unicorns, one-liners, and insightful cast, fan and crew interviews.
If you are a fan of online gaming, comedy, or social outcasts, and you still haven't seen The Guild, please quit living under your rock and go to http://www.watchtheguild.com and then check out Kenny and Jenni's awesome Knights of the Guild podcast at: http://knightsoftheguild.podbean.com .
Hours of laughter later, you'll understand why the podcast has thousands of downloads and the web series is in the top ten comedies on ITunes.
Mittleider, in his late thirties, is a post production supervisor in southern California and a huge self-proclaimed geek, with a major Star Wars collection and a sweet, huggable teddy-bear personality.
Enter Jenni Powell, former Lonelygirl15 crew member and transplant to the crazy world that is Los Angeles, funny, quirky, irreverent, and chasing the dream of web series industry success.
Both offered their talents to Felicia Day's web series The Guild crew back in the first run of the off-the-wall comedy about a group of addicted gamers forced to interact offline. Back then, all was funded by PayPal and run by volunteers, with Jenni as Production assistant and Kenny working behind the scenes on featurettes and in post production. Already fans, they became even more hooked while working on the show, with the access to the awesome cast, crew, and fan base that makes up the Guild community.
Thusly, a fan podcast was born.
Powell found herself Mittleider's partner in crime, and together "Kenny and Jenni" have built quite a name for themselves not only for their excellent coverage of The Guild but for their great repoire and hilarious online personas.
From the first edition, it was clear that this was not your every day fan podcast. With professional quality audio production, show-to-show continuity, and clever lead-ins to each section of their show, Knights of the Guild launched a year ago and became a staple for fans looking for the latest and greatest in goings-on with the Los Angeles-based web series.
Kenny and Jenni make it look easy. What fans don't see are the hours and hours of preproduction, organizing schedules with cast members for interviews, soliciting and handling fan feedback, dealing with crazy technical difficulties, and spreading the word near and far that goes on behind the scenes.
To both of them I wanted to say bravo and congrats for a year of hilarity, unicorns, one-liners, and insightful cast, fan and crew interviews.
If you are a fan of online gaming, comedy, or social outcasts, and you still haven't seen The Guild, please quit living under your rock and go to http://www.watchtheguild.com and then check out Kenny and Jenni's awesome Knights of the Guild podcast at: http://knightsoftheguild.podbean.com .
Hours of laughter later, you'll understand why the podcast has thousands of downloads and the web series is in the top ten comedies on ITunes.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Organization and time management obsession
I've become obsessive about improving both my attention to detail and time management lately. To this end, I've been implementing several techniques and would be willing to share them as well as take some feedback from the world regarding the way you manage your time.
On time management
One of the tools I find myself using quite frequently is Reqall, a technological successor to Jott. It's geo-awareness and ability to update my calendar dynamically from my phone via voice -- as well as send reminders to others, has been a boon.
This, along with Google Calendar, has become the primary way at this time my personal life is managed; work collaborates using the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook.
Several of my coworkers have started personal wikis where they store knowledge they need for doing things on a personal basis or for their home businesses. I'm creating a instance of TurnKey linux on my home vmware server for that purpose. Shortly, chrisfeyrer.com will be migrated to VMWare so that I can use that desktop for multiple purposes; not just hosting this site, which will allow me this flexibility.
Sites like Lifehacker also give valuable insight into how these things can be accomplished.
On attention to detail
Details, details, the devil in the details. This is the area where I could use some feedback. In the engineering profession there is little room for fudge factor when dealing with specifics. In a rapidly moving, team-based environment with multiple clients managing details is a huge priority as each client wants their metaphoric cake delivered with metaphorically awesomely perfect dimensions and frosting. It's a goal all IT workers hold dear.
With this goal in mind, managing details in a digital library has been ineffective for me. Tools like Evernote are useful in theory but seem impossible to populate with effective tags. In essence, building a library and keeping it organized becomes such an intense amount of overhead that its usefulness is undermined. It revolves around you converting everything in your life, from receipts to photos to captures on the web, to digital, and tagging it quickly and effectively. This is time I could spend actually doing the tasks and having a digital librarian in my life could be a full time job!
At any rate, I'm curious as to the techniques people reading this blog entry use to manage your time and people, specifically during the work day, and, if in a management position, how you report this time to management and expect the specifics of those under you to be reported to you. I've been reading the O'Reily book Time Management for System Administrators, and it's giving me insights into this topic as well.
However, software and lifestyle recommendations aside, it's hard to know what people are finding that actually work in practice. That's what I'm looking for, with the understanding that it's different for everyone.Thanks in advance for feedback and contributions! Hopefully this will generate a list that is useful to a lot of people.
Speaking of people who accomplished great things using the little time they were given, Happy Martin Luther King, Jr day to all.
Chris
On time management
One of the tools I find myself using quite frequently is Reqall, a technological successor to Jott. It's geo-awareness and ability to update my calendar dynamically from my phone via voice -- as well as send reminders to others, has been a boon.
This, along with Google Calendar, has become the primary way at this time my personal life is managed; work collaborates using the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook.
Several of my coworkers have started personal wikis where they store knowledge they need for doing things on a personal basis or for their home businesses. I'm creating a instance of TurnKey linux on my home vmware server for that purpose. Shortly, chrisfeyrer.com will be migrated to VMWare so that I can use that desktop for multiple purposes; not just hosting this site, which will allow me this flexibility.
Sites like Lifehacker also give valuable insight into how these things can be accomplished.
On attention to detail
Details, details, the devil in the details. This is the area where I could use some feedback. In the engineering profession there is little room for fudge factor when dealing with specifics. In a rapidly moving, team-based environment with multiple clients managing details is a huge priority as each client wants their metaphoric cake delivered with metaphorically awesomely perfect dimensions and frosting. It's a goal all IT workers hold dear.
With this goal in mind, managing details in a digital library has been ineffective for me. Tools like Evernote are useful in theory but seem impossible to populate with effective tags. In essence, building a library and keeping it organized becomes such an intense amount of overhead that its usefulness is undermined. It revolves around you converting everything in your life, from receipts to photos to captures on the web, to digital, and tagging it quickly and effectively. This is time I could spend actually doing the tasks and having a digital librarian in my life could be a full time job!
At any rate, I'm curious as to the techniques people reading this blog entry use to manage your time and people, specifically during the work day, and, if in a management position, how you report this time to management and expect the specifics of those under you to be reported to you. I've been reading the O'Reily book Time Management for System Administrators, and it's giving me insights into this topic as well.
However, software and lifestyle recommendations aside, it's hard to know what people are finding that actually work in practice. That's what I'm looking for, with the understanding that it's different for everyone.Thanks in advance for feedback and contributions! Hopefully this will generate a list that is useful to a lot of people.
Speaking of people who accomplished great things using the little time they were given, Happy Martin Luther King, Jr day to all.
Chris
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